Foreground, creepy demon thing, I agree with Toraush Naull – peed myself a little. Background though, amazing and mind-boggling… is it ocean… is it clouds… I dunno! Kinda gets the feeling of evil gettin’ blasted out of a volcano though. sweet.

Now that I look at the background of that last panel, it seems like it’s a pictures of the ground from high altitude. I looks like nimbus clouds over a low level cloud layer. The lower right section looks like a hole in the cloud cover looking down on some terrain with water. Possibly a river system or some small lakes.

Not really – the encroaching Catholic church made a great ‘crusade’ (sort of) out of ‘purifying’ the Irish lands of pagan beliefs. The celebration of any Catholic holy day would be – frowned upon – by goulies, ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties of Pagan descent.

Exactly.. And here i was thinking that Shelly and Bud were the impulsive ones..

Today’s comic will have a couple of possible outcomes:
1) Monica ends up on her butt, completely shocked and baffled. Bud angry that M couldn’t hold her impulses to “touch” despite her warnings.
2) Scary woman takes over Monica, M’s demons and scary woman tussle, and crazieness ensues.
3)Bud powerfully shoves Monica away..gets infected by scary woman through touching M.. world as we know it ends….for good…
4) Bud touches Monica ,scary woman does something to Bud, a tearfull “BUUUUD NOOOOOH!! from Monica, Bud reverts to being an inert clay golem, rest of comic is questing for a way to fix Jin and Bud….

I have to admit that 3) is less likely, since it would also mean the end of the comic…And me doth think that Paul still has too much fun drawing it..

I decidedly see a little grin. A bit like the smile my Gran’ gave when I, as a little kid, refused to believe her when she said that the electric cooking-plate was hot….and insisted on touching it.. “He who doesn’t listen, should feel”

that thought has made that job more appealing.
i would DEFO go for that if i got to whack people on the head who make bad food choices. Would have to be a rubber-squeeky one tho else you would end up giving peeps brain damage after a time.

Paul keeps taking the time to draw the McGuffin with prongs on the bottom. One possible reason is that it was pulled out of something. Ergo, the story arc may be a search for that something so that it can be plugged back in.

Really Monica….. Your demons come to life, you can Poit all over the world, you have two(maybe three) golums on your beck and call, you’ve saved the world from repeating it’s self for the 57th time, your best friend can crush steel coffee pots like they are soda can, and you are 4 foot tall with volley balls for boobs…

But there is no way the artifact, that looks like its on lone from the Green Lantern Core, this couldn’t be magic?!?!?!

I wouldn’t be too surprised there are banshees in vacuum-tubes, giving the “music” some of my friends push through their expensive tube-amps.. “Cradle of Filth” “Marduk??? You need a tube-amp to “enjoy” that???

Hmm..suddenly thought of something.
The “thing’ has these prongs sticking-out. Sooo..it seems logical to assume it fits into something.

What if..just bear with me, what if the scary woman we (and M) see is indeed part of Jin’s personality. Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, it’s her “common-sense”, but in this case gone completely bonkers through being locked-up for centuries. It would explain the panicked-crazy look of the apparition…

The “missing” part of the “Thing’ is the part that is needed to get this Jin-part out of the “thing” safely, to connect again with the Jin we know.
This “missing part” has been gone for centuries, maybe even on purpose.

Maybe Jin is much more powerful without the “common-sense” -bit, and someone, or something needed Jin -maybe even only temporarily- unleashed and devoid of “common-sense” so he (She?? Mayahuel??) incarcerated that part of Jin in the “Thing”. Stuff went belly-up (A whole civilization glassed-over would be the mother of all “belly-ups”), and the person or entity that had the Jin-part locked-up, could not revert the situation as planned.

Yes, I know ,it’s waaay speculative, but it seems logic somehow.

Buuut..if this isn’t a Jin-part..all bets are off, and hell is about to break loose in a major way..

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now while working(hopefully the boss doesn’t see). It makes a lot of sense that this would be a part of her, they are looking for something to make her complete. Personaly I really don’t want to see where they stick this object to complete her. Those prongs at the bottom look like they would hurt.

Just remember that sticking a rather sharp ice-pick in Monica’s head fixed the calendar-machine problem.

I guess Paul wouldn’t be too perturbed by drawing Monica sticking something in Jin’s head, f.i. mebbe Jin even has recepticles in her head or something (given the fact that sticking anything in an indestructable golem would pose a teensy-weensy bit of a problem)

Orrr. I am completely off-base and Paul is currently rolling on the floor, laughing his A$$ off.. 😛

According to Jin and her mom, as long as the calander machine was working Jin didn’t have these problems. Something about being stuck in this time loop kept her “some-what” mentaly sane. Now that the machine is destroyed she “went back to the way she was.”

The Calendar Machine arc is complicated. First, yes, it was causing time to loop around on a 1450-year cycle. On the other hand, just breaking or resetting the machine wouldn’t fix the problems; they needed to rescue Mayahuel from the Demon Realm, stuff the renegade demons back into the Demon Realm, and at the same time turn off the Calendar Machine. This led to a preposterously complex plan that failed a few dozen times for various reasons (mostly unexplored). So, yes, just fixing the Calendar Machine would have been fairly easy. For that matter, the whole combination wouldn’t have been so hard except that they needed Monica’s help and at the same time the total ignorance of the demons who were riding in Monica’s mind. By the rules of drama, the iteration we saw was the one where it finally worked.

HO-ly crud! I hope Bud’s got sense enough to jerk the relic away from Monica before it damages her permanently. If it hasn’t already.

“It’s not like it’s magic.” I agree with others, that one of the stupidest things Monica has said. Everything Bud had told her, the relic’s appearance and possible origin, all of those should have SCREAMED ‘magic’ to Monica.

Crispy and the Banshee should get together and see who can scare the other the worst.

The more I think of it, the prongs on the relic hoozit and having to fit it into something else reminds me of Excaliber. The origin-myth of said sword?? Only it wasn’t Arthur (Artur, Arto or Artos) who pulled it apart.

AND I keep thinking, too, that the last panel would make one KILLER screen saver!! You seriously ROCK, Pablo!!!

The Banshee ( /ˈbænʃiː/ ban-shee), from the Irish bean sí [bʲæn ˈʃiː] (“woman of the síde” or “woman of the fairy mounds”) is a feminine spirit in Irish mythology, usually seen as an omen of death and a messenger from the Otherworld.

Okay, so omen fulfilled. Damn! Time-lines and time-travel give me brain cramps. If Shelly hadn’t met this sphinx yet, she hasn’t hidden the object yet… but if she hasn’t hidden it yet, it couldn’t have killed her. Ouch, ouch, ouch…